Superstition 

 Surprise 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



672 



of Kepler, was now discovered." This dis- 

 covery and those related to it coincide with 

 the unhappy period when this great man, 

 who had been exposed from early childhood 

 to the hardest blows of fate, was striving 

 to save from the torture and the stake his 

 mother, who, at the age of seventy years, 

 in a trial for witchcraft, which lasted six 

 years, had been accused of poison-mixing, 

 inability of shedding tears, and of sorcery. 

 The suspicion was increased from the circum- 

 stance that her own son, the wicked Chris- 

 topher Kepler, a worker in tin, was her 

 accuser, and that she had been brought up 

 By an aunt who was burned at Weil as a 

 witch. HUMBOLDT Cosmos, vol. ii, pt. ii, 

 p. 314. (H., 1897.) 



3323. SUPERSTITION DEFEATING 



KINDNESS The Emperor of China Buries a 

 Burning-glass. It is said that the Emperor 

 of China, when he got his lens [a three-foot 

 burning-glass, made at great expense, and 

 sent by the English government as a present 

 to the Chinese monarch], was much alarmed 

 by it, as being possibly sent him by the 

 English with some covert design for his in- 

 jury. By way of a test, a smith was or- 

 dered to strike it with his hammer; but the 

 hammer rebounded from the solid glass, and 

 this was taken to be conclusive evidence of 

 magic in the thing, which was immediately 

 buried, and probably is still reposing under 

 the soil of the Celestial Flowery Kingdom. 

 LANGLEY 2V ew Astronomy, ch. 4, p. 103. 

 (H. M. & Co., 1896.) 



3324. SUPERSTITION, EFFECTS OF 



Historic Eclipses Have Affected Believ- 

 ers in Their Malign Influence. History re- 

 lates a crowd of memorable acts on which 

 eclipses have had the greatest influence. 

 Alexander, before the battle of Arbela, ex- 

 pected to see his army routed by the appear- 

 ance of a phenomenon of this kind. The 

 death of the Athenian general, Nicias, and 

 the ruin of his army in Sicily, with which 

 the decline of the Athenians commenced, 

 had for their cause an eclipse of the moon. 

 We know how Christopher Columbus, with 

 his little army, threatened with death by 

 famine at Jamaica, found means of pro- 

 curing provisions from the natives by de- 

 priving them in the evening of the light 

 of the moon. The eclipse had scarcely com- 

 menced when they supplied him with food. 

 This was the eclipse of March 1, 1504, ob- 

 served in Europe at Ulm by Stoffer, and at 

 Nuremberg by Bernard Walter, and which 

 happened at Jamaica at 6 o'clock in the 

 evening. We need not relate other facts 

 of this nature, in which history abounds, 

 and which are known to every one. FLAM- 

 MARION Popular Astronomy, bk. ii, ch. 9, p. 

 181. (A.) 



3325. SUPERSTITION FOUNDS ON 

 NATURAL PHENOMENON The "Fairy 

 Rings." Several low forms of plant life, 

 such as Marasmius oreades, Spathularia 

 flavida, and some of the puffballs, start in 



isolated spots in the grass of a lawn or 

 pasture, and spread each year from a few 

 inches to a foot or more in every direction, 

 usually in the form of a circle; at the end 

 of fifteen years some of these circles ac- 

 quire a diameter of fifteen to twenty feet or 

 more. These are known as fairy rings. Be- 

 fore science dispelled the illusion they were 

 believed to have been the work of witches, 

 elves, or evil spirits, from which arose the 

 name. BEAL Seed Dispersal, ch. 2, p. 4. 

 (G. & Co., 1898.) 



3326. SUPERSTITION IN AVOIDING 

 SUPERSTITION Danger of Undue Recoil 

 Superstition, without a veil, is a deformed 

 thing; for as it addeth deformity to an ape 

 to be so like a man, so the similitude of 

 superstition to religion makes it the more 

 deformed ; and as wholesome meat corrupteth 

 to little worms, so good forms and orders 

 corrupt into a number of petty observances. 

 There is a superstition in avoiding super- 

 stition, when men think to do best if they 

 go furthest from the superstition formerly 

 received; therefore care would be had that 

 (as it fareth in ill purgings) the good be 

 not taken away with the bad, which com- 

 monly is done. BACON Essays, essay 17, 

 Of Superstition, p. 63. (W. L. A.) 



3327. SUPERSTITION, INDICATIONS 

 OF, IN LOWER ANIMALS Fear as a Re- 

 sult of Intellectual Confusion Dog Terrified 

 ~by Mystery. It produces a strange emotion- 

 al "curdle" in our blood to see a process with 

 which we are familiar deliberately taking an 

 unwonted course. Any one's heart would 

 stop beating if he perceived his chair sliding 

 unassisted across the floor. The lower ani- 

 mals appear to be sensitive to the mysteri- 

 ously exceptional as well as ourselves. My 

 friend, Professor W. K. Brooks, of the Johns 

 Hopkins University, told me of his large 

 and noble dog being frightened into a sort 

 of epileptic fit by a bone being drawn across 

 the floor by a thread which the dog did not 

 see. Darwin and Romanes have given similar 

 experiences. JAMES Psychology, vol. ii, ch. 

 24, p. 419. (H. H. & Co., 1899.) 



3328. SUPERSTITION, ITS EX- 

 PLANATION OF SCIENTIFIC FACT At 



the place where we slept [11,000 feet up in 

 the Andes] water necessarily boiled, from 

 the diminished pressure of the atmosphere, 

 at a lower temperature than it does in a 

 less lofty country, the case being the con- 

 verse of that of a Papin's digester. Hence 

 the potatoes, after remaining for some hours 

 in the boiling water, were nearly as hard as 

 ever. The pot was left on the fire all night, 

 and next morning it was boiled again, but 

 yet the potatoes were not cooked. I found 

 out this by overhearing my two companions 

 [Chileans] discussing the cause; they had 

 come to the simple conclusion " that the 

 cursed pot (which was a new one) did not 

 choose to boil potatoes." DARWIN Natu- 

 ralist's Voyage around the World, ch. 15, 

 p. 323. (A., 1898.) 



